The Bluebeard Room, Owl House, Nieu-Bethesda, August 2 2010

Part of the reason for the return trip to Nieu-Bethesda was to document the Owl House's Bluebeard Room, opened and cleaned - but not on show to the public. It is so named after Charles Perrault's 1697 French folktale of Bluebeard (thought to be Gilles de Rais), a nobleman who was in the habit of killing his wives and dumping their remains in a locked room. One day he leaves his chateau and gives his present wife a key to the room, saying she is not to go in. She does of course, drops the key in horror, retrieves it covered in blood and can't get it off. Bluebeard learns of her disobedience and is about to kill her when her two brothers arrive and kill the man. De Rais was an infamous serial killer of the time.

Quite who named the Owl House room, or what it was used for, no one is sure, but the story echoes sentiments voiced about Miss Helen's despotic father. His room was known as the Lion's Den, so the BR cannot have been used to 'keep him'. On the red door out to the Camel Yard (it is an outside room with an additional interior door connecting to the long Sun Room) is a frightening scrawled face in white which seems to suggest 'beware, no entry'.

Inside the small room there is much that is curious. Half the floor is designed in typical bottle mosaic - green and brown - and half is block squares of painted concrete, blood red and natural. Why this design, no one knows. It may have something to do with the small bath in the corner. If, as is likely, the room was used to strip bottles of their labels (with powerful chemicals), perhaps Martins did not want to destroy the bottle mosaic. On shelves are some of the chemicals she (and her helpers) used.

For me the significance of the room is that if, and it's a big if, she did work in here with such potions, it's far more likely they affected her sight in later years, rather than the far-fetched notion of ground glass.

On the back of the connecting door are a few very personal items, too 'valuable' to put in the house - her glasses and a duffel bag she used on her travels, marked with her name and address in what can be assumed is her handwriting (terrible).

One final observation - looking through the archive with Arno du Toit, it's clear where the inspiration for Miss Helen's fearsome warrior table (outside next to the back door), comes from. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, in the Edward Fitzgerald translation, features vivid illustrations by Robert Stewart Sherriffs. Clearly the figure in the second plate is her table prince. The symbol he is holding also features in the Camel Yard; fashioned out of tin and glass, it sits right next to the back door.